📕 Title: The River She Became
✏️ Author: Emily Varga
📖 Genre: YA Fantasy
⭐ Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
🗓️ Pub Date: June 30, 2026

Following the invasion of Astola by the Angrezian Empire, Yaseema feigns loyalty to the regime while secretly hunting fae relics that hold magic essential to her people’s survival, reclaiming them before the Empire can steal them. After she uncovers a long lost artifact that grants access to the fae world, Yaseema finally has the chance to recover an ancient relic capable of restoring magic to Astola—but she’ll have to work with a fae prince who has other plans for it.

REVIEW

Thank you Wednesday Books for the digital copy!

The River She Became is a dual-POV young adult fantasy novel with a romantic subplot, written in first person perspective. This is the first book I’ve read by Emily Varga and I really enjoyed it! It’s fast paced, jumping right into the action from the first chapter, and I really liked the relic hunting aspect.

I loved Yaseema, a clever and scrappy young woman on a quest to save her people, and especially appreciated that she has curly hair and glasses. Kiyan was a complex character with a tragic backstory that kept me invested in his quest to overthrow the Salt Court. They both have flaws and secrets that kept things interesting as they slowly broke down each other’s walls.

The worldbuilding offered plenty of political intrigue, especially how Salt Court’s occupation of River Court in the fae realm parallels the Empire’s occupation of Astola in the human realm. A major theme was colonialism, criticizing not only how invaders steal historical artifacts from occupied lands, but also how they try to strip away cultural practices. I do wish there had been another perspective to the story from the human realm, because once Yaseema crosses into the fae realm Astola is shifted to the background and I kept wondering what was going on over there.

This book was comped to The Cruel Prince, which is fair in the sense that this story also features a human girl trapped in a fae world and has political intrigue, but the romance is a completely different setup. The dynamic between Yaseema and the Kiyan is a slow burn “reluctant allies to lovers,” and while I did like their relationship arc it was in no way similar to Jude and Cardan’s. There are some steamy moments but no detailed sex scenes.

While I enjoyed the writing overall, it was repetitive both in terms of concepts and prose. I felt that many plot points were unnecessarily restated throughout the story, while in terms of the prose I noticed repetitive phrasing, such a paragraph where “realized/realizing” was used in three subsequent sentences. However, my review is based on an ARC so it’s possible that some of these issues will be resolved in the final book.

After the ending of this book, I’m very excited to read the sequel!